Horrificly bad naval battles?

["Hacky"-TheOmega277]

Ive built a lot of artillery ships, as I love ranged units. However two full stacks of lvl 3 ships get easily beaten by lvl 1 boarding vessels. Mostly because the enemy can deploy all 6 of their units, while I cant deploy ANYONE. Even as the defender. So I have to rely on keeping the spawn points open, which is impossible as the enemy just sits on them on their first turn. Is that a bug? It certainly doesnt make any sense and is very frustrating

[Gilmoy]

Blocking reinforcement flags is EL tyro tactics 101. You should always do this to the enemy. If the enemy does this to you, you will suffer. It seems that you overestimated your strengths, and actually you're not even the stronger side in that duel, so the outcome was the correct one.

When you evaluate your own side's tactical oomph/strength/firepower/score, one key metric to look at is:

(1) whether you have Initiative and speed advantage, and can pin enemies on their flags
(2) or, if not, whether you can completely wall off your own flags so they can't pin yours

#1 is why cavalry units, and fast quick ships like Boarding Vessels, exist.
#2 is why you want Era II Meritocratic Promotion for 6 units + Era IV Signal Corps for 8.

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Level 3 vs. level 1 means almost nothing. What size is your "full" stack? 4 or 6?
- If they have 6 and you have 4, you're probably losing regardless, by attrition alone.

- Boarding Vessels pack a strong punch when they're undamaged. A typical level 1 Boarding Vessel with all-iron stuff (no strategics) might have 90 Life and 50 Damage. Its Boarding Parties 1 capacity gives +30% of its current Life as damage, which is +27 Damage. Its level-1 Attack is probably better than your level-3 defense, so most of its attacks will do a Standard Hit = 100% of its Damage rating. So your ships are eating 77 damage per attack. With 6 ships, they lead off with 462 damage in round 1, and slightly less in later rounds because some of them took your counterattack damage. Does that sink 2 of your ships per round? Then in round 2, it's 6 vs 2+2. Play out this duel a thousand times, and you're not winning any of them.

The #1 rule of EL combats, on land or sea, is: Don't Be Outnumbered. If they have 6 and you don't have that tech yet, you're about 20 turns away from being fully prepared to fight them. Never pick a fight where you know you're 2nd-best before it even starts.

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For exactly this reason, my own preferred naval mix is Boarding Vessels + Artillery Ships. You need Boarding Vessels to stop the other side's Boarding Vessels and Fire Ships, and the Maw when it finds you. (Also, play through dozens of huge sea battles, and you'll notice that enemies tend to prioritize your own Boarding Vessels very low as worthwhile targets, which leaves them mostly undamaged to keep piling up those Boarding Parties bonus damage increments, over and over again.)

- I don't like Fire Ships because I hate waiting for DoT to kill things slowly.

- I dislike Bathyspheres because they can't pin an enemy by forcing its counterattack, and their Stun isn't high enough to be worthwhile, unless you pay Mi/Hy for Stun 4, and it's not worth that much. Plus, their Initiative is so low that they always act last in each round, which means their Stun essentially lasts for only 1 round. Their Stealth is not that useful, because you don't gain much by sneaking around the seas, compared to just killing everything and taking the seas outright with a fleet of Boarding Vessels with Forcefield.

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Finally, nothing about this encounter was specific to naval battles. If you fought the same EL combat on land, say their 6 fast cav vs. your 4 slow archers, you'd see exactly the same tactics: they swarm you, kill you off, and play whack-a-spawn on your flags. Tip your cap and acknowledge that the other team is Alabama and they paid you to travel to their house, and get better. Being new at EL is not a bug in EL

Generally, to win at EL, first you learn that this is the proper tactic, and then redesign your game play, including your tech tree, build path, minor faction assimilation choices, and your schedule for declaring wars, to make it all work out in your favor. That usually means you spend the last half of Era II (or later) on all of:

- your 2nd unit type (from Era II, or an assimilated minor faction, or a 2nd Tempest ship type)
- Meritocratic Promotion for size 6 armies
- enough troops to fill up your armies (at least 6+6 + 2 heroes to invade)
- with a solid mix of tanks/goons, flimsy cav, ranged, and healers
- 1 general hero per army
- wearing Army Initiative/Damage Boost insignia from Alchemical Armor

For Tempest sea battles, you want most of the above, including 2 ship types. You can skip the hero, because he's weak compare to any Tempest ship, and hero accessories are suppressed while the hero is embarked, so you lose any insignia bonuses.

And then you're fully ready to soak the enemy's rush, sneak your cav to their flags first, rotate them back to heal and stay alive, and grind down the enemy with equal numbers but superior prep. That's one approach to the game, and it works pretty well. If your prep is less than that, then it may seem "frustrating", but it is not a bug when the AI plays well.

["Hacky"-TheOmega277]

Hey, thank you very much for that detailed answer! It definitly gave me some good tips for future naval battles!
However, my problem was not that the enemy was countering me, it was that in the beginning of my naval-battles NONE of my ships were spawned in. As in the deployment phase being actually useless, which meant that out of 10 ships, 2 would be fighting, as they would spawn in after the enemies first movement towards me. Afterwards ofc, with my spawn points blockaded, none of the remaining 8 of my ships could spawn. And it just made no sense, as there were no effects or anything that should/could cause this in my campaign.
I have now started a new campaign because of this, and it weirdly doesnt seem to be a problem there luckily.
However, again, thank you a lot for taking your time to write that. It was still very informative!

[Worblehat]

Was the enemy attacking a fortress that you owned? That would trigger a battle with your nearby fleet(s) as reinforcements, but no starting ships on the map as you describe.

Gilmoy, thanks for the write-up, always informative. My approach to naval combat tends to be fleets consisting entirely of Fire Ships, since I'm reluctant to research more than one ship type (too many other important techs). Mostly agree on Bathyscaphes, though in my Allayi game I was so late to get access to the sea that I researched them (and no other ships) just to finish exploring the map without getting pounced on by all the AI fleets or Cthulhu.

I disagree slightly about skipping the hero - Morgrawr heroes are great in sea battles, once they've gained just a few levels. Any other races, sure, they're as useless as any land unit.

[Repairman Mack]

Your spawning issue is one that happens in land battles as well. It wasn't any kind of glitch; it's just the way things are. In a battle it means that there is not much space for the disposition of your units on the battlefield due to the terrain. In a naval battle the enemy is probably attacking you from the wider sea direction, while your fleet is up against the coast. On land you have probably done this same thing when attacking a village on a small peninsula. They can only deploy one unit at a time, even if they have 12 units in the village.

This is why you try to give your hero's the extra reinforcement positions in their promotions -- although I am not sure that helps in the worst cases.

The good thing about Endless Legend is that it promotes careful tactics, with concern for terrain, unit type mixes, and gear selection. The strongest force is not certain to win -- that's the whole point of tactics. Local superiority wins over strategic superiority. Choosing terrain advantages and a good direction of attack allow a weak force to annihilate a strong force.

Endless Legend accentuates tactics effects with the heroes. One good land hero to search and fight is a must, while if you start building sea fleets then also get a Morgawr hero as soon as possible to do the same at sea.

["Hacky"-TheOmega277]

@Worblehat oh wow, I feel mighty stupid now. It was probably most likely that one of my fortress were attacked and not my fleet.
Thanks for clearing that up for me lol!

[ElPrezCBF]

I'll take any naval battle over the sea monster any day.